Excitement at the discovery that more English 18 year olds are on Facebook than registered to vote.
Officials expressed concern yesterday after figures revealed that Facebook has 1.08million 18-year-old users in Britain, compared with just over half a million who have reached voting age in the past year and registered on the electoral roll.
Lots of chatter - some of it relevent, some nonsense about making it easier to register (how about via Facebook - now that's a thought) and about "engaging" with young people via social media. No-one asks whether this discovery is either new or much of an issue. After all, if voting becomes something of concern, something people are concerned about, something that will make a difference, then rest assured that people will not only register to vote but will queue up outside the polling station to exercise this democratic liberty.
The problem we have (and remember that half of UK adults didn't vote in the 2010 election) is that loads of people simply don't see the point of voting - it doesn't seem to matter much to them or make the slightest bit of difference to their lives. So they don't bother.
And we (that is the politicians) don't care either - or we'd be hanging around at student digs and taking registration forms to sixth form classrooms.
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